When at the computer,watching TV, reading or riding in a car, within 10 minutes, it's as if a spell comes over me and it begins with brain fog followed by slurred speech general whole body weakness and fatigue. If I continue any of these activities for too long I experience sore throat, increased emotional lability, burning mouth, intensified sense of smell and other neurological symptoms like paresthesias and fasciculations. It seems that if my brain has to process too much information or process information rapidly, ie, travel and tv these symptoms occur.
Any input is truly appreciated!
Frank
In many, I think the effects of PEM are not immediately evident, as it corresponds to those symptoms caused by the cellular damage, and the degree of damage can take time to accumulate to such an extent that it produces symptoms. Of course this is not universally true, when ME/CFS worsens, I think many demonstrate very high levels of cell-free DNA even through the process of a sedentary lifestyle; these people are destroying cells, which take time to replace. This cellular damage can increase very rapidly depending upon the intensity and duration of exertion, especially whether or not it is aeroboic vs. anaerobic, and the your capacity to protect yourself against the effects of this exertion. I found that as my condition worsened there was a corresponding decrease in the threshold, which precipitated the symptoms. Symptoms would appear more promptly, they were more severe, and they would take longer to resolve. Perhaps my most sensitive indicator of of cellular damage is burning of my eyes., there are other causes for this, but I could readily correlate this to exertion. Effects are often delayed based upon your hormonal response. One can accelerate their metabolism, increase energy output and cortisol secretion as a result of some physical stressor making himself feel better temporarily, but this just masks the underlying damage. The cortisol covers up some of the damage, provided you are secreting it to any particular degree.
There is a continuum of P.E.M. symptoms with the more advanced symptoms included a lot of pain, headaches, flu-like feeling including, fatigue, and brain fog. There is commonly some paresthesia in extremities, and even some chronic inflammatory symptoms that never abate, which I supposed would be a secondary consequence of causing inflammatory damages that cannot be repaired.
I think there can be some overlap of those pure P.E.M. symptoms and those that were probably mediated by immediate glutathione availability in the skeletal muscles, other tissues, and brain. I make this statement with a great big assumption about what was happening, since it is only an interpretation. These are the symptoms that don't necessarily persist for the usual duration and don't necessarily follow ant exertion. Some of these symptoms would include weakness, as in your legs giving away, and some of the horrible CNS symptoms, which include light and noise sensitivity, really hypersensitivity to any sort of stimulation, this is when thinking can be incredibly painful. I think when you get this bad and you are always severely fatigued, start having confusion, and constantly in pain, it's hard to decipher what is going on.
You seem to be describing something episodic versus features of P.E.M, which is certainly not transient. Actually most of those symptoms are recognizable except for the throat, mouth, and smell stuff. It reminds me of the time before I crashed, figuratively speaking, except I had massive surges of adrenaline that were easily recognizable.